Visit Notes

Sunday, 18th July 2004

With a chamber 4m long, 1.5m wide and 1.6m tall this tomb would have been one of the largest portal tombs in Ireland. Considering the size of the roofless chamber the portal stones are quite short - a little over 1.8m.

The structure stands behind a newish bungalow at the base of a rocky escarpment and faces southwest. There are traces of a cairn, but the spread is not wide enough to indicate that the tomb was ever covered.

The rock face behind it, the undergrowth around it and on the rock behind do a superb job of hiding this from view, even from the road just 50m away. It is worth a visit though, but I would have liked to have seen it when this little corner was devoid of all the new houses.

A compartment in a tomb in which burials were placed. In court tombs and wedge tombs a chamber is a sub-division of the burial gallery. Portal tombs have single chambers and passage tombs can have anything from one to five chambers, although usually passage tombs are considered to have a main chamber with extra subsidary chambers.

Two stones place either side of a gallery, opposite each other, but not touching so as to leave a gap, that are used to segment it into smaller chambers.

Like this monument

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A Selection of Other Portal Tombs

About Coordinates Displayed

This is an explanation of (and a bit of a disclaimer for) the
coordinates I provide.

Where a GPS figure is given this is the master for all other
coordinates. According to my Garmin these are quite accurate.

Where there is no GPS figure the 6 figure grid reference is master
for the others. This may not be very accurate as it could have come
from the OS maps and could have been read by eye. Consequently, all
other cordinates are going to have inaccuracies.

The calculation of Longitude and Latitude uses an algorithm that is
not 100% accurate. The long/lat figures are used as a basis for
calculating the UTM & ITM coordinates. Consequently, UTM & ITM
coordinates are slightly out.

UTM is a global coordinate system - Universal Transverse Mercator -
that is at the core of the GPS system.

ITM is the new coordinate system - Irish Transverse Mercator - that
is more accurate and more GPS friendly than the Irish Grid Reference
system. This will be used on the next generation of Irish OS maps.